1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electron beam exposure system having a plurality of electron beam exposure apparatuses and a method of manufacturing devices using the exposure system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In electron beam exposure apparatuses, which deflect electron beams and expose patterns onto objects to be exposed, there has been a tendency for the amount of data necessary to control the electron beams to increase significantly as semiconductor element patterns to be exposed onto objects to be exposed get finer. Furthermore, since semiconductor elements, which are made into finer patterns, are made with increased multilayering, the number of times different patterns are exposed tends to increase.
However, the amount of control data corresponding to patterns to be exposed, which can be stored in an electron beam exposure apparatus, is limited. For this reason, each time a pattern to be exposed is changed, the electron beam exposure apparatus needs to perform an operation for transferring the pattern data for the patterns to be exposed and for converting the pattern data into control data. Therefore, in semiconductor manufacturing, this results in a problem of decreasing productivity, which occurs to a greater extent.